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Mary Worth, 5/9/24

Dawn is reconnecting with her Connecticut WASP mother by attempting to enjoy high-prestige social pursuits like the ballet. Wilbur, meanwhile, has reacted to his brutal romantic rejection by descending into unkempt couch-based schlubdom. This is an experience Dawn knows a little bit about herself, so no matter how annoying she finds her mother’s culturally elitist suburban clique, she should be thankful she’s not being pulled back into that morass.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/9/24

It’s sad, of course, that Helga has no friends she can confide in. But thanks to her husband’s canonical illiteracy, she can confide in her books to her heart’s content. It’s like being able to scream in a language he doesn’t speak, constantly!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/9/24

Rex Morgan is about to face his most terrifying medical challenge yet: his family’s emotions, which he’s apparently supposed to care about. Remember that crazy guy who wanted Rex to do a little experimental brain surgery on someone in an attempt to “cure crime“? He refused then, but now seems to be contemplating whether he could “cure feelings that require attention from me” using nothing but his trusty power drill.

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Gil Thorp, 5/6/24

Milford has its own Native American reservation and, we learn today, its own institution of higher learning. Soon, having accrued all the necessary components of a robust civic life, this high-school sports crazed town simply won’t need the rest of the United States. That’s when Phase 2 begins.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/6/24

“Let me explain! The castle’s main sewer drains into the moat. You probably already have cholera!”

Mary Worth, 5/6/24

Wow, it looks like Meagan didn’t just smooch that waiter to help purge all Wilbur-related thoughts from her mind; she actually wants to see if he’d be a good fit for a long-term relationship! I certainly hope that she, like everyone Wilbur has been even obliquely romantically involved with, invites him to her wedding to really rub his face in it.

Hi and Lois, 5/6/24

That’s … that’s what everybody likes about working form home, Hi. That’s one of the main reasons why people like to work from home!

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Hi and Lois, 5/5/24

I guess the point of this strip (to the extent that any given Hi and Lois comic can be said to have a “point”) is to shore up the Walker-Browne brand and remind American that the Camp Swampy gang and the Flagstons’ suburban hellscape coexist in a single universe of shared IP. Personally, I’m more intrigued by the comic book time effects: when the strip launched in 1954, Lois presumably had a birth date that would’ve put her roughly in the same demographic as her grandmother in the middle second row panel here. But what really makes this for me is Ditto looking cruelly at the cookie jar and whispering that delightfully batshit sentence at it, simultaneously erotic and threatening, the sort of thing that, if your parents overheard you saying it, they’d repeat it to every romantic partner you ever brought home for the rest of your life, to your mounting distress.

Beetle Bailey, 5/5/24

Elsehwere in the FlagstBaileyVerse, Killer is making a dating app profile! As much fun as the main body of the strip makes spinning a web of lies in an attempt to attract some hapless young woman seem, I must point your attention to Killer’s look of beaten-down resignation in the first throwaway panel. Being the most oversexed soldier in your unit is a job, and Killer is determined to be good at it, but like every job it wears on you after a while.

Mary Worth, 5/5/24

Maybe Killer doesn’t need to put so much work into this, though. After all, if the person you meet on the apps turns out to not be for you, you can always just smooch the nearest attractive service worker to fulfill your natural romantic needs! (Just kidding, if Killer tried this today he would immediately be arrested, because of woke.)